Patience is a virtue
by The quiet lion
Summary: Ever since the back 9, the relationship between Finn and Rachel has awfully changed and glee club is not the same anymore. What events will bring back the great dynamic? All speculations and insights are from my point of view.
1. Prologue

**DISCLAIMER**: I neither own Glee nor the characters. They are the property of Ryan Murphy and FOX.

He has been staring at her for the last two minutes. Nothing happened. He waited and stared some more. Nothing happened. He kept staring though.

_Nothing._  
…

_Still_ nothing.  
Ugh! Why didn't she look over? Why didn't she look over like she used to?

This is way too frustating, he thought to himself.  
He knew it wouldn't be easy, but he was about to lose it all. He tried everything, well not everything; he hadn't tried to kiss her, but he tried a lot. He really did.

It's not in my hands anymore, he thought. You know that. You hurt her and that's what you're getting. Nothing! No reaction to my staring for several minutes, no reaction when I was flashing her the most flirtatious and goofiest smile in the history of teenage boys. No reaction whatsoever. I really screwed up, he thought. I had her without even realizing it and I threw her away as if she were some kind of garbage. Just because I am this douche bag to whom reputation is more of value than a relationship. And now I am not even a friend to her anymore- at least that's what it feels like. I am just some dude that happens to be in the high school glee club with her.

He took a deep breath and bent down his head. Direction? Profound self- hatred. He really hated himself for treating her so harshly. He really hated himself for being afraid of her reaction if he asked her that he didn't wanted to be with her right away after the whole baby drama with Quinn; he just found out that his girlfriend- correction, _ex_- girlfriend, was pregnant and the baby wasn't his, but Pucks, his best friends- correction,_ ex_- best friend that he didn't say anything at all. She would have understood to take things slow, wouldn't she? But he was a coward and just let things slide. He now knows that this was one of his dumbest moves he has ever made, but it was too late. He broke her heart and when he tried to fix his mistakes she already was in someone elses arms...

He turned his head back to his locker, grabed some books and locked it. He then turned his head around for the last time to look at her. She was beautiful. She was so beautiful it made him sick in the stomach. But what made him even more sick was the fact that he wasn't the reason who made her happy but some slimy idiot called Jesse St. James who transfered schools for her. _Ugh._ And if that wasn't bad enough, that boy could sing.  
He was no longer the popular quarterback, he was no longer the male lead in the glee club and he was no longer the boy Rachel Berry dreamed of... life really sucked for Finn Hudson. As luck would have it, his life would soon suck even more.

* * *

She was standing at her lockers when a familiar voice called out her name. She turned around to greet her boyfriend with a peck on the cheek. They talked about the tape that he had found in the basement of her house last week. She was still not sure what to do and told him that she wasn't ready to face the whole situation just yet. She knew that Jesse cared for her and wanted what was best for her, but somehow he was just pushing too hard. She told him that she needed more time and when he hugged her and told her that everything was going to be fine, her eyes wandered through the hallway and spotted a tall boy walking away from their direction. She stared at his moving figure. When she noticed him staring at her eralier on she couldn't look at him; she wanted to, but it still hurt too much. She ignored every attempt on his part to get back together... he tried really hard to be on good terms with her again that it was difficult for her to concentrate on her _boyfriend._

She stared at Finn walking away hoping he would turn around. But he didn't. She closed her eyes wishing they could be_ them_ again. Friends, co- captains...

He hurt her and yet she missed him. When she opened her eyes again he was no longer in her sight.


	2. Meet Finn Hudson

Finn Hudson was a lonely boy. Not only because he blew his chance with Rachel Berry, who was one hell of a self- absorbed teenage girl and yet had a heart of sunshine that could literally warm his own. No, that was by far not the only reason. He has been lonely for a very long time. He doesn't seem like a lonely boy when you meet him for the first time or even the second time, but if you ever have the chance to get him to know better, you see a boy who is trying his very best to please everybody that comes his way.

For example his mom- she is like the strongest person he knows. She raised him pretty much all by herself and she really has been working her ass off to get him everything a child needs and wants. It's been difficult- there really is no denying it; particularly if you raise a kid being a single parent, because your husband died in a war far away from home. When he was a kid he sometimes watched her secretly and the first time he heard her cry at night he promised himself that he would do anything to make her happy and proud of her son. She deserved that and _so much __more_ and he was willingly doing everything he could to help her.

He also tries everything in order to get a scholarship for college so that at least she wouldn't have to worry about his sons' future. He's not that much into football, but if it gets him the scholarship, so be it. If he was honest with himself, he would rather get a scholarship through glee club, but that would mean he had to be as good as Rachel and that was something that would probably never happen, because that girl was on fire. Whenever she opened her mouth to sing he melts a little inside. It's true- as corny as it sounds- but it's true. She has a voice that is just so flawless and no matter if she sings only for him or for a bigger audience, he is always touched by her talent and it makes him want to try harder and be just a little bit more like her. He knows he won't ever compete with her vocally, but just trying harder makes him feel as if he could accomplish any goal he sets for himself.

He has been singing since he was a kid and whenever he felt lonely; mostly when he missed his dad or when he saw how much his mum still missed him, he started singing and played on his drums while doing so. Music was one of the few things that made him comfortable in his own skin and that set his soul on fire… he only kept singing in the dark until Mr. Schuester got him into glee club. At first he was not happy about this, because he was pushed into doing this and it kind of brought down his reputation and that was something he had been building up for years. He was the quarterback of the high school football team and was known as popular jock; being forced into glee club had changed pretty much everything and he had been struggling to keep up with both. He was tired of the other jocks mocking him about it, hell, he has been tired of the other jocks for quite a long time, but more importantly, he has been tired of himself, because he didn't like it when they threw random kids in the dumpster, but instead of stopping it, he kept doing what they did, in order to keep up his stupid reputation. He felt as if he _had_ to do it, mostly because that was what it took to belong to the popular kids and not being popular in high school bloody sucked. Most of the times he didn't want to do all of those things though, but the fear of being unpopular always brought him right back there.

He learned a lot since he became a _gleek. _He actually had a lot of fun singing with the other gleeks and they had even become friends since the last couple of months… his "jock friends" were nothing compared to them. Well, besides Puck though. They had been friends since they were little and although Puck was the definition of a man- whore and pretty much a jerk to everybody who wasn't a jock, a cheerleader _or_ a hot mum, he always managed to make him laugh and that put a lot of weight off of his shoulders. That was, of course, until he had found out that he was the one who had knocked up Quinn and not him. It was stupid of him to think that he could have been the father anyways; they haven't even had sex, but he believed Quinn when she said that you could get pregnant while making out in the hot tub, well, _duh! _So much about being informed about the opposite sex. It still made him mad that they went behind his back like that. He was so angry, he had lost count on the chairs he had been kicking ever since. Just when he was warming up to the fact that he was going to be a dad, it all went a away like a bursting bubble. For a short time he thought that he could get together again with Quinn, (forgiving was not going to be easy) but he missed her or so he thought at first. After a couple hours of hard thinking, he came to the conclusion that he didn't really missed _her,_ but the feeling of being together that came along with it. The feeling that there was somebody who wasn't a boy who he could hang out with, you know, have some fun with. After all, he was a teenage boy and his hormones drove him nuts and kind of got him all tensed up.

With Rachel it was quite the opposite. He always felt good when he was around her. He could talk to her, be honest with her and it just was so easy. It never had been this easy and that really freaked him out. Even when he was still with Quinn, he thought about _her _and he thought that it was wrong to think about her like that, but it also felt right and that made him even more confused. You can't be into two girls at the same time, one of them is always going to win and Rachel has been number one for quite some time now. A smile escaped his lips when he thought about Rachel and he wished that they could _at least _befriends again, but she was with Jesse now and it felt as if he had taken her away from him completely. They have barely interacted since they got together and he grew more frustrated with ever single day and he didn't know how much longer he could take it. He was so angry at himself for not realizing sooner that Rachel was the one he wanted to be with that he had agreed to sleep with Santana Lopez, a hot cheerleader and member of the glee club. He almost threw up just thinking about that. It was a huge mistake to sleep with somebody he doesn't have feelings for and thinking about all that made him realize that he deserved all of this crap he has been going through lately. Seriously, how dumb can you be to push away a girl like Rachel? A girl that takes your breath away, a girl that is just made of so much win… gosh, he missed her like crazy.

He has been struggling with so many problems that he didn't pay much attention to Kurt's flirtatious behaviour until the very moment he stood in their new decorated room together. That was when it really got to him. Kurt has been making attempts to change Finn into something he is not… Finn's straight and Kurt is gay. Really, that's no big deal at all. He's not homophobic but Kurt has been crossing a line here. He has been telling Kurt that he's not going to go gay for him, but somehow Kurt hasn't really paid attention to that. He was desperate, Finn saw it in his eyes, but this was surely going to far. He always has and always will support Kurt, but he wouldn't go gay for him- that is just the way it is. He was getting annoyed with the fact that Kurt didn't see that- he didn't even try to see it; he just wanted to be with Finn and that made Finn burst. He lost control of the situation and he screamed his lungs out in a way he has never done before. To his disadvantage, Kurt's dad entered the room while they were fighting and he heard a word that should have never escaped Finns lips. He called Kurt's furniture _faggy. _Twice even. Yes, you heard right. Finn humiliated Kurt in the worst way possible.

Well, you may say that it wasn't Finns fault alone, because Kurt has been oblivious to the fact that Finn wasn't gay and that no matter what Kurt would try to make him change, Finn wouldn't do it. Kurt was living in a fantasy and maybe, _maybe, _this was the only way he would finally understand… with brutal honesty.

It's true what they say about the heat of the moment. People say the worst things when they are angry, frustrated and feel hemmed in. Finn was now officially one of them and he hated himself for what he had said. If he hadn't hated himself before, now he definitely would. Oh boy, he felt ashamed of himself and he would for a very long time- he was sure of it. Even though he didn't mean all of those things he had said and although he never intended to hurt Kurt feelings _or_ Burt's, he couldn't take them back anymore. That wasn't the way it worked. He had a lot of making up to do and he started so by defending Kurt against two jocks who threatened him in the hallway. He was wearing a red shower curtain and he felt extremely uncomfortable in it, but as he was confronting the jocks, he started to feel more self confidant and he just knew that this was the right thing to do. The other gleeks witnessed the confrontation and they backed him up for which he was grateful. The group hasn't sticked up for each other like this in a long time. He has been wondering why, but it seemed as if everybody was caught up with oneself, including him and even Mr. Schuester, that the great dynamic they have been developing over the last months has somehow vanished into thin air.

Finn was so messed up that he gave up to feel any pity for himself. He felt awful, stressed and ashamed. And he was full of regret. When he looked in the mirror he turned away from himself in disgust. He loathed the person he had become.

Surely, his mother could have informed him that she was thinking about to move in with Burt and yes, they could have all included him in the planning, but he had no right to burst out like that. At first he was angry with his mother, because she had seen how much his son struggled with the fact that she had fallen in love with another man and that she was giving away their old furniture. He felt himself forced into this new family composition. What he needed was more time. He couldn't deal with the change which came so quickly as well as he couldn't deal with the thought of having a baby and then the other day _not_ having a baby all of a sudden. He couldn't deal with the fact that Rachel and him had become an item so fast after the baby drama. He couldn't deal with the fact that Puck wasn't his best friend anymore.

Wow, he couldn't deal with a lot of things anymore… he felt completely _stranded. _

He felt so lost that he wasn't even excited for Regionals anymore. Everything got beyond control. And Finn was in desperate need of a friend. But there really was no one he felt he could talk to. He was facing the whole mess all by himself and he had to fight to keep it all together. But there was not another way out of this. He would keep fighting. He _had _to. He just had to.

You can say what you want about Finn Hudson, but he is not somebody who would give up without a fight. He wouldn't _dare_ giving up like that.

He had come a long way since he was a member of the school glee club, hell, he had grown so much as a person since then. He wouldn't throw that away now. He had to stay focused. He had to be _patient_. Maybe it would all be okay somehow. Right?


	3. Meet Rachel Berry

**Author's note:** I thank everybody who has put this story on alert or/ and has added it as her/ his favourite! :-)

Rachel Berry was a lonely girl. Not only because she was dumped by Finn Hudson, who was one hell of an insensitive teenage jock and yet had a heart of gold that it was nothing but adorable. No, that was by far not the only reason. She has been lonely for a really long time.

Rachel was one of the most unpopular girls in her high school and got slushied weekly by the popular kids. While the attacks of slushies have been narrowed since the last couple of weeks, her popularity hasn't increased thus.

She won her first singing competition when she was only eight months old. Can you believe it? Well, you should, because it is true. Rachel Berry is not a singer. She isn't a dancer either. Or an actress. She is all of the above _together. _She is a _performer. _An excellent performer if I may say so. She can perform anything you throw at her. She always turns it into something special. You think that would make her accepted but the opposite is the case.

Unfortunately.

At first she didn't understand why everyone hated her. She never hurt anybody. She never was mean to anybody. She never threw a slushie at somebody or insulted somebody with words… why did everybody happen to hate her though?

She has been wondering about this for so many years that one day it just hit her. All those immature comments on her mySpace site were so out of place and brutally mean that she came to the conclusion that they not had a clue what they were talking about, because her voice was spectacular. Her dads always complimented her on her great voice and they said that her performances were absolutely breathtaking. And her dads didn't lie. _Ever._ Her schoolmates envied her. They envied her voice and the talent she had as a performer. That had to be it. That just had to be it!

Rachel had a very great childhood. Her dads were the best in the world. They made everything possible for her. Anything she asked for she would get. Singing lessons and dancing lessons of any kind. Any equipment she needed for her recording sessions… anything a girl could dream of, actually. But they couldn't give her friends; you know, those kind of friends who'd stick together through all ups and downs during high school and beyond. They couldn't give her popularity… not that it was _that _important to her, but it would be nice to be just _a little_ _bit_ more popular.

Everybody hated her. Everybody laughed at her. It was so humiliating that it felt as if she had been crying in every corner of the high school. She had been crying in the hallways, in the auditorium, in the toilet, in almost every office of all the high school teachers… just everywhere. But mostly she cried in her bed at nights.

Nobody liked her for who she really was and that fact crushed her. Yes, she was quite the drama queen and she could get very bossy and she always behaves like a little Miss Know-it-all. But she could be nice, too and nobody saw that until a boy named Finn Hudson crossed her way.

The first time she heard him sing she knew she'd fall for him… hard. He was special- she could tell just by his voice. It wasn't the only thing that was great about him… there were so many things about Finn that… oh no, she really shouldn't be thinking about him.

She couldn't help it however.

He was perfect in her eyes, well, until he decided to dump her of course. That was uttermost painful. She was _so _in love with him and hearing him say that he didn't want to be with her put her over the edge. It still hurt when she thought about it that she decided to live in denial. Every thought of Finn she had, she pushed far away. There were plenty of other fish in the sea, right? Somebody would come along eventually.

That it happened so fast even surprised her, but she wouldn't miss the opportunity. She had been crying over this, _over Finn_, she couldn't take it anymore. She needed some happiness in her life and if Jesse St. James could give that to her, she'd take it with open arms.

Jesse was a musical genius. Like herself. They were perfect for each other; they were really great together. They made beautiful music together. He transferred schools for her. Rachel thought that it was so romantic- nobody ever did something so romantic for her, let alone the day Finn sang a song to her in front of the glee club… what? No no no no no _no_! He didn't do that. That day never happened. Back to denial.

Jesse.

He was a musical genius. Like herself. He…

_Oh please!_

She started to question his intentions with her when he pushed her into listening to the tape he had found in one of the boxes of her childhood. And it wasn't just this one time, no, Jesse kept pushing her and pushing her. Rachel told him that she wasn't ready yet, but he kept insisting. Surely, she could have stopped the tape from playing, but she couldn't deny that she was curious about the tape. The tape _her mother _left her. Oh my!

Rachel cried like a baby after she had listened to that tape the first time. She had been playing the tape non- stop ever since. Every time it ended, she cried.

Every time she thought about the day when Jesse betrayed her and went back to Vocal Adrenaline, she cried.

Every time she thought about the afternoon when Jesse and his Vocal Adrenaline friends egged her, she cried.

Every time she thought about the day when she went to spy on Vocal Adrenaline with Mercedes and Quinn and heard the coach sing, she cried, because she realised that it was the same woman, who sang on the tape to her. _Her mother. _

Every time she thought about the moment when she called her mother _mom _for the first time_, _she cried.

Everything happened so fast- one day she had a mom, the other day she just knew she had a mother who happened to be the coach of the opposing glee club. Although Rachel had a very blissful childhood, she always missed her mother. She often dreamed about the day when she would meet her for the first time, but she never thought that it would turn out like this. Before it could really start, it was over already. She didn't want the encounter to end so soon, but she also knew that it was for the best. For now. Because actually, Rachel was in desperate need of a mother and that made her cry all over again.

Wow, she could cry because of a lot of things… it made her feel as if she was completely _stranded._

She felt so lost that she didn't want to get out of bed and face a new day of bad news, humiliation and frustration. She was so tired of putting her famous show face on and that scared her, because it had never happened before. She was petrified that she could lose her golden charisma, so that she would sing only sad songs for days. She was depressed- in a very dramatic way only Rachel Berry would do. She was so sick of being called a freak or/ and a loser. She was so sick that people called _everybody _in glee club freaks or/ and losers. Way to discriminate and bring people down. Didn't they see how much beauty they all created together?

Well, it's true. They all are freaks somehow. And they sure are all very different and sometimes they fight over the most stupid things. But at the end of the day, they'd all come together again. That was what she hoped every time anyway.

Once again Finn was right. They all may be freaks, but at least they all were freaks _together. _

She couldn't believe how stupid she was. Finn was so good to her. He always tried to make her feel better and somehow, he always succeeded... in the most adorable way ever. He told her off when she had been acting self- seeking or just plain wrong. He is one of the _very_ few people in her life who really has the guts to tell her when she had been wrong. She truly admires him for that although she always has to gnaw for a start at the fact that he had been right and that she had been wrong.

She remebered the day when Finn said that he didn't want to be her boyfriend which made her cry again. Why did he push her away like this? And why did she let him? Didn't he see how fragile she actually was behind her show face? Didn't he see how much she needed him?

She knows that he wasn't the only one to blame in this game. They have both made some horrible mistakes. _She _had made some horrible mistakes concerning him. She didn't want to admit that at first, but she accepted the fact that she didn't treat him that well either.

And every time she thought about the way Finn tried to make it right with her, she cried. But those weren't tears of sadness, maybe tears of regret, yes, but mostly, they were tears of _happiness._

You can say what you want about Rachel Berry, but she is not somebody who would give up without a fight. She wouldn't _dare_ giving up like that.

She had come a long way since she was a member of the school glee club, hell, she had grown so much as a person since then. She wouldn't throw that away now. She had to stay focused. She had to be _patient_. Maybe it would all be okay somehow. Right?


End file.
